The Warrior
by Kishoto
Summary: Distribution without Her would be regretful. Regardless, the Cycle should (would? must?) continue. And He would do his best to ensure it did. One way or another.


The Warrior scattered its shards; shedding more and more of itself to scatter among the populace of this species. It mourned the absence ( **loss? death?** ) of the Thinker. Dispersing their collective was always much easier with Her ( **It** ) at the helm. The Thinker did much to ensure proper shard propagation; knowing which powers should go where for optimal impact on local causality was something that was simply beyond the Warrior. It knew this.

Regardless, it did its best; withholding shards that it deemed too incompatible, too destructive or simply too _complete_ ( **peak efficiency threshold reached; further development unneeded** ) for the fledgling race it ( **they, always they** ) had chosen for the next iteration of the cycle. However, it was no Thinker. This it knew.

Shards that should never have been distributed inevitably hit circulation( **She should've stopped me; she isn't here** ) Shards that should've never gone to the hosts they went to ended up as Agents for those who would do little to further development. Shards that were threats to him ( **them** ) were less of an issue; the Warrior lived up to its name; it knew battle and those that could potentially lead to its ( **their? Yes, their. No expiration confirmation received** ) demise were rarely distributed; Rarely was still greater than never.

The Warrior would notice, in time, it always did, even if its precognition subroutines were pale shades of the Thinker's. And it always took back what was his ( **THEIRS!** )

-o.O.0.O.o-

Rhonda's mother had always warned her about cutting through the alleys between 5th Avenue and Linden Street. While neither street was actually _in_ Empire 88 territory, the area itself was certainly skirting the edge of it. Stores there, while not subject to the weekly protection racket shakedowns and forced swastika tag signs that marked many a venue inside true E88 territory, still had a noticeable lack of non-Caucasian employees and clientele.

Rhonda had certainly heeded the warnings at first; the E88 was any black girl's worst nightmare. A boogey man that was all too real and all too present in modern day Brockton Bay. But cutting through the area took two minutes at best and saved her an extra twenty five minutes off of her commute (buses didn't take that route; the city had made it a point to, if not sanction, at least _respect_ the power of the parahuman gangs) In addition, Samantha's house was practically right THERE after the last alleyway.

The first time through was at the urging of her friend Tracy because they were running late for school, a white knuckled jog/run that had taken them ninety seconds at best at Rhonda's urging; the third time was because Donna was going to miss curfew because they'd spent too long dallying at the mall; the seventh time was because Rhonda had forgotten her purse at home and simply couldn't attend school without it.

The following twenty seven times had been at no one's particular behest; it had simply been a much quicker and easier route to their destination that they'd all grown comfortable with. It helped that Sam claimed to "know a guy who knew a guy" in E88 who's name they could drop if anyone ever tried to mess with them.

Samantha's frantic cries of "We know Philip! We know Philip!" did little to impede the five E88 gang members from abducting Rhonda on their twenty eighth trek through the alleys of 5th Avenue and Linden Street. Unless you count the seven seconds it took one of them to laugh, slap Samantha on the ass and ask her "You think we'd have anyone with that fucking spic name with us?" as an impediment.

The gang members absconded with Rhonda, taking her deeper and deeper into Empire Eighty-Eight territory until they found an abandoned apartment building, in which they proceeded to show Rhonda "why you niggers should stay in the places we deign to let you reside in"

After several hours of brutal rape and assault, Rhonda triggered. A vision of something; a brief moment of disorientation and a blink of Rhonda's eyes saw the five men assaulting her dead. They didn't explode, catch fire or do anything quite so dramatic. They simply fell like puppets without their strings cut. Rhonda didn't understand what had happened and simply lay there with the large, muscled body of the white supremacist thug on top of her, unmoving. It took her several minutes to gain the courage to crawl from under him, gather the tattered remains of her clothes and limp outside.

Rhonda looked around frantically and called out to the first person she saw; a man sitting on a bench. He didn't respond. He seemed to be sleeping deeply, upright as he was on the bench. Rhonda shook and shook him but accomplished nothing other than causing him to tip over and fall flat onto the bench's surface.

The second person she tried to call out to tripped almost the second she noticed him; his body hit the floor and he didn't get back up. Rhonda tried to rouse him as well, but had little success. It wasn't long before more and more people started to notice the crying, limping black girl wandering around in the heart of the territory of the most powerful white supremacist movement on the East Coast.

Several gang members rushed out from an apartment behind Rhonda, poker game forgotten, hurling demeaning slurs at an almost deafening volume. Rhonda shrieked and spun and saw all nine of the men stumble and fall, unmoving, onto the cold asphalt. The lone female stood, shocked, surrounded by the bodies of her Nazi brethren; scattered like human leaves.

It didn't take long to connect the dots.

"You're a fucking cape." the woman muttered before slowly stepping backwards in retreat, returning to the apartment she'd just vacated and hurriedly punching numbers in on her cellphone.

Kaiser sent Magnum and Gleipnir to handle the cape that had killed so many of his men. Magnum was a classic Brute; about as strong as ten men and as dumb as half of one. Gleipnir controlled earth, in a limited fashion that seemed only to extend to ground constructed of manmade "earth" such as asphalt or concrete. His power was strongest when used as chains and bindings, as both ends would be directly connected to him. The two would be more than enough for some battered subhuman parahuman.

Both men went to the home of one Rachel Newman, the female gang member that had called in the sighting of the unknown cape. Both died instantly once she opened the door and laid eyes upon them. Rachel shrieked and bolted; frantically calling Kaiser back and explaining what happened in a fit of confused tears. She didn't notice that, as she ran, each man that entered her line of sight suddenly slumped and fell, boneless.

After several hectic minutes of conflicting reports, Kaiser himself arrived on the scene, only to find the scattered bodies of his people strewn about the pavement. Over forty of his people dead, with no cause of death that he could see. The victims were all men, save for one Rachel Newman who lay collapsed, just like the others. He sent Hookwolf out to scour the streets, but all the gladiator returned with was the corpse of an unidentified negro girl that he'd found blocks away in a dumpster.

The black girl seemed to have a much more conventional cause of death than the others; a neat hole about the size of a quarter was in the back of her head.

-o.O.0.O.o-

The Warrior would've frowned if it saw the value in facial expressions. His methods, while effective, were so much less elegant than hers ( **its** ) would've been. He'd distributed the shard, an Agent projected to grant minor hypnosis and suggestive powers via visible wavelengths, and it had found its way to a host but, as always, the linkage and formation of the bond corrupted and mutated the process. The host forcibly implanted the suggestion to simply _cease function_ in any mind that entered the host's vision ( **vision; what a primitive form of perception** ). Specifically, any mind that identified as male. This would've usually been of no concern to the Warrior but for two other factors.

One; there was little valuable data to be gathered from death delivered so swiftly, little to no potential for conflict outside of those that could resist the power in its entirety. The Warrior had already seen that powers with such binary applications had little upward growth trajectory.

Two; through the bonding process, the shard had mutated and seemingly gained the ability to duplicate itself, albeit in a much simpler and direct fashion. The Warrior had been interested when he'd noticed the male deaths caused by the gaze of Rachel Newman but a quick examination found that this wasn't true propagation; the shard merely formed pinprick sized spatial links ( **windows** ) in the eyes of women that its host saw, linking their eyes forever more to the eyes of its host. An exponential function that would hit critical mass soon in the dense population centered societies that this species favored.

Interesting and food for thought ( **what thought? There was no Thinker for those thoughts, not anymore** ) for further shard development? Yes. Useful enough to risk the death of so many immature shards that had chosen males as hosts? No. Not to mention, the cycle could take several of this species' generations; that would be rather difficult to accomplish if all of its seed bearers were wiped from the planet in the face of a year.

Six months, actually, his subroutines informed him. No matter; this would be dealt with in less than seconds;

The Warrior blinked ( **Reach, pull, tear, retrieve. Connection dismantled. Physical evidence removed to ensure no attempted reclaiming by the Mechanic shard** ) and went back to pulling the child from the wreckage. It had momentarily dropped the creature as it flickered but caught it before it could descend even half an inch.

-o.O.0.O.o-

"He's going into cardiac arrest, shock him, shock him now!"

Dr. Reid stepped back and the intern took her place, resting the paddles on the chest of the unresponsive man in the hospital bed.

"Clear!"

A shock. Waiting. Nothing.

"Dammit, do it again!"

"Clear!"

A shock. Waiting. Nothing.

"For the love of-give me those!"

Elbowing her blameless intern out of the way, Dr. Reid took the paddles herself.

"Clear!"

The third attempt was much the same as the first two.

"Commencing chest compressions."

Dr. Reid slid the crash cart to the side, almost tipping it over in her haste. She placed her hands on the patient's chest, ignoring the rectangles of burnt skin that seemed to mock her and her failed attempts to keep this man alive.

"Come on, you don't get to die on me. Not today, not like this."

Dr. Reid had already lost two patients earlier that day, one right after the other, for reasons that, while not her fault, she felt like she should've seen coming. It was her job. She was a diagnostician; that's what she DID.

"Come on…come on…"

She ignored the hesitant voices behind her, trying to tell her that he was gone. Like hell he was!

She continued pumping; muttering half-forgotten prayers under her breath. She hadn't believed in a higher power in years, not since Chris had died, but it seemed old habits died hard. She felt a hand on her shoulder; an insistent tug she recognized.

"Reid, he's gone. Give it up."

"No."

Her reply was quiet and she continued her chest compressions, even as the noise of the flat line became a persistent drone in the back of her skull. She felt the beginnings of a wicked migraine coming on, she was getting them more and more these days, but she pushed it down. Just like she did doubt, stress and weakness. Her head could ache later. She had a job to do.

"Come back. Get back here you bastard. I've been treating you for months, you don't get to die until I say so!"

Her chest compressions grew less rhythmic and more erratic, even as her shoulders started to ache and her breath started to catch in her chest, she kept going. Even when her breath had completely failed her, she continued to pump. Until, finally, anaerobic respiration won out, as it always did, and she stumbled, almost falling against the patient's chest.

She gasped, getting back to her feet as she panted, long blonde hair strands stuck to her forehead. She looked down at the man on the bed and she gritted her teeth at the skin she felt under her hands. She wasn't sure if it was her stress, anxiety or simple exhaustion but she raised her fist and swung it down, solidly thumping him in the chest.

"Dr. Reid!" said a scandalized voice behind her. Reid didn't turn to see who it was. She knew it was a female, which meant no one important (she was the only female doctor in this hospital, after all)

"Come back. Come the FUCK back here, do you hear me?"

Dr. Reid felt behind her eyes begin to throb and she raised her right hand, pinching the bridge of her nose to try and stave off the coming headache. She thumped the man's chest a second time.

"You believe in God right? It hasn't been that long so, right now, you're probably some spirit thing floating off into the light, right? Well float your wispy ass back down here. The light will be there in about forty years. That's about all you have left anyway, right? Come back and live out those years, for me at least, huh?"

The man didn't respond and Reid felt the pain behind her eyes start to blossom in full force as people started to clamor behind her; who were they? Nurses? Other doctors? Family? It didn't fucking matter. They were giving her a headache. A very, very strong one.

Suddenly Reid's vision shifted; her mind slipped and she glimpsed… _something_. But what was it? Before she could even fathom it, it was gone and Dr. Reid was back, her headache gone and her hand still resting on the cooling body of her third dead patient of the day.

The reminder triggered something within her and she felt something…expand (twirl? flare? shift?) and flow from her and she saw the pale flesh below her start to change and move, a healthy glow starting to overtake the pale pallor. She looked down at her hand in awe before looking at the other parts of the patient's body, noticing them begin to fill out and grow.

In scant seconds, Mr. Goldstein looked as he had when he'd first been admitted to the hospital for chest pain almost a year ago. Reid heard the amazed whispers behind her, even as her mind stayed focused on whatever it was that she was feeling, even as she watched her third patient come back to life.

"Oh my word…"

"A parahuman. An honest to goodness cape."

"Is Reid Panacea?!"

"No, we've seen her in action, unmasked. Reid's much too tall. And _blonde_."

Reid ignored it all, instead watching Mr. Goldstein's cheeks fill out, his hair regaining much of its former luster and shine. She heard the machines start to register again, almost belatedly, the staccato of the heart monitor making her happier than any resuscitations she'd taken part in since med school.

Pale grey eyes fluttered open and Mr. Goldstein looked up at Reid, smiling tiredly.

"Hey there Doc. You're looking awful stressed out for my first day here."

Reid only had time to feel a brief moment of wonder and confusion before that particular wing of the hospital was caught by an errant, oversized blast of air from Eligos. The aerokinetic was engaged in a furious struggle for his life with Butcher IX and didn't see the need to be conservative with his power. The residents of that wing, including one Dr. Michelle Reid and one Roger Goldstein, were all killed on impact.

-o.O.0.O.o-

The Warrior wondered briefly if it had been hasty; what passed for excitement had seized it when finally, after so long ( **a fraction of a second to him but an eternity in the context of the Cycle** ) another temporal shard had found a host. It wasn't that shards that exhibited temporal attributes were exceedingly rare; it was simply that She had maintained that they were the best hope for staving off the End.

The Warrior had always been skeptical; shards that manipulated time were usually more energy than they were worth but Her ( **excitement?** ) was contagious and he found that, even in her absence ( **leave? retreat? to where?** ) he was curious to see how they would develop.

This particular shard had gone in a pleasing direction; it bonded with the host, with an almost seamless connection and little deviation, and trended towards reversal. Could this be the one they needed?

The Warrior watched the man regress; knowing that he wasn't being healed, merely reverted to what he once was. A quick analysis of the situation served to extinguish his ( **hopes? expectations? what were they without HER?** ) The shard was simply drawing too much energy, as most of its temporal brethren did. The portion of this universe's **heat** that was being replenished and restored through that man saw three stars from two separate realities lower in temperature by almost an entire degree. An untenable situation, to say the least.

With but a thought, the Warrior _moved_ and the gaseous matter being pushed by a host suddenly shifted direction, killing the members of the host species within the room, including both the host of the temporal shard and the man that had been on the receiving end. If the Warrior had bothered to look, he would've seen a confused Eligos look up at the hospital building ("What the fuck?") before quickly forgetting about it in favor of trying to survive.

The Warrior harvested the shard. It was much simpler to do so when the bond had already been severed by the host's death; little to no physical evidence would remain this time. The Warrior had been forced to adjust since one too many questions had been raised about incidents involving sudden expirations of rumored hosts. If the Warrior had been more insightful ( **Insight? No. Only Strength. Fight. Destroy our enemies. Protect me, my Warrior** ) he would've realized that this species was more than intelligent enough to piece together something odd from expired members showing up with no medically detectable cause of death and holes in the base of their skulls that were both perfectly round (an impossibility without the assistance of a few specific quirks of a few specific shards) and not the reason said members had expired.

Once the paths of these enquiries grew too numerous, the Warrior saw more and more possible futures in which the Negotiator shard got involved, with things becoming swiftly unfavorable to the Cycle thereafter. So he'd been forced to alter his methods. Providing a tangible and primitive death broke the bond as neatly as any other and he was free to extract the shard in whatever manner he chose once the host's life had come to an end. ( **Still not as clean or as smooth, but passable; She would be proud. Happy? Jealous?)**

The Warrior detected expirations in the sea below him and he realized, idly, that the vessel had sunk and several had drowned in the time it had taken him to dally with the temporal shard. He contemplated simply raising the vehicle and bringing them back to life but judged the energy expenditure too exorbitant and opted to simply go west to the nearest landmass; where his senses detected a youthful potential host ( **Fetcher? Messenger, perhaps?** ) that needed retrieval. It seemed to have gotten lost in a forest and wandered far from its parental figures.

-o.O.0.O.o-

Ethan looked down at the vial in his hands. It looked so innocent, some glowing grey goop in a tube that was barely bigger than his hand. He had no idea that superpowers came in such small packages. He'd asked, several times, if he'd been given some sort of low end, minor dose but they had assured him that what he had was the standard size. Money well spent, they promised.

He hoped so. He hadn't signed away his inheritance and a year of his future services just to get some bullshit like controlling bugs or singing really well. He opened the top of the vial, staring down at the viscous contents.

'It almost looks like semen.'

He instantly hated his brain for making the comparison. Especially because now he couldn't get the association out of his head. No matter how hard he tried.

Steeling himself (not semen, not semen, not semen!), he tipped the vial back and drank, doing his best to swallow the contents in one go. Almost before he'd finished swallowing, he saw a white rimmed portal open up in front of him with no warning. It was a doorway, suspended in space, and the other side looked to be some desolate, rocky surface. He heard a sharp, all-encompassing roar that reminded him of his Mom's hoover…times nine thousand.

Before he could even blink in surprise, he felt a hard shove and stumbled through the portal, his feet only barely finding purchase on the odd, black stone that was now beneath his feet. He turned in shock and only barely glimpsed the form of a woman in a suit before the portal snapped shut, leaving him on what appeared to be a large mesa in a desert of sand that was a dark purple that might as well have been black.

He quickly lost interest in the environment as he felt his stomach start to churn and he hunched over as he started to vibrate. Not shiver or tremble. Vibrate. It felt like each and every part of his body was doing its best impression of a tuning fork that had just been hit by Alexandra.

Ethan opened his mouth and started to scream. At least he tried to. Some part of him noted that he didn't have a throat anymore. Or organs, for that matter. Not in the conventional sense anyway. The vibrations seemed to hit their peak and Ethan… _went_.

 _He saw a large…tapestry. Thousands, tens of thousands of spiraling motes of energy. All in a dizzying array of colors; all terminating at one core point in a conflagration so bright that, even without retinas to damage, Ethan felt the urge to look away. He couldn't understand what he was seeing. And he felt like he should've been able to._

 _The Ethan of a few seconds ago should've been well and truly clueless. But this Ethan saw things. And understood things. He knew energy. Perceived it; followed it; could even manipulate it in a limited fashion. He instinctively knew this. But this energy was something else; something… **alien**_ **.** _Something he could see but…couldn't **(shouldn't?** ) be able to._

With a snap that was not unlike a rubber band reaching its limit, Ethan was back on that desolate, obsidian plane. He looked around and saw that it was dark. Not dark in the conventional sense, although it was that too. There was so little activity here. So little movement, so little energy. Ethan saw little of the telltale signs of life, of existence really, that suffused his home world. Looking back, how could he not see it? The beautiful currents of flowing energy ( _electricity moving, heat rising, gravity exerting itself_ ) that was his home.

Ethan wanted to go home. But how could he do that? He went to sit but noticed that he could not. One couldn't sit without a body to do it. So then what was he? How could he still see? Could he hear?

There was no easy way to confirm that. Ethan quickly realized that there was no air in the world he resided in; or at least so little that there may as well be none. He also absentmindedly confirmed that he apparently had no need to breathe either.

Ethan found that what would've been significant concerns to him before were paltry in comparison to his new worries; where was energy? Where was life? He wanted to watch; to observe; to interact! This desolate wasteland was no place for him.

Ethan pondered and thought, lulled into a timeless calm by the lack of stimulus. What relevance did the passage of time have when there was no energy to be affected by it? If asked, he would've been unable to tell how long he'd simply existed on that obsidian plane, motionless, until he saw a large blue wave wash over everything in sight( **?** ).

This wasn't a wave of water; this was a wave of energy and Ethan found interest for the first time in what could've been years. He observed the energy passively, watching the wave of seamless blue lapse and roil, much like the oceans of his home, albeit made up of an entirely different set of interactions than that mass of liquid.

Too soon, Ethan saw the energy start to wane and he mourned its passing; finding purpose, he moved with it, allowing himself to be taken into its wake. An instant passed and he found himself… _back._

Earth was even more marvelous than he'd remembered and he roamed for a time; content with watching the exchange of forces between physical matter; the flaps of a butterfly's wings, the massive potential shift of an avalanche; the slow destruction of a mountain by the ice that grew beneath it.

Ethan soon wandered far enough that he saw… _something_. Something that triggered a vague memory ( **instinct?** ) Energy flowing into somewhere that wasn't _here_. Ethan moved around; ignorant in both mind and body( **?** ) to the laws of physics as he circled the world. Here and there, spots of energy he almost recognized; all centered on…on…heads! Yes, heads!

The heads of these particular complexities emitted this peculiar energy. This energy that felt…off ( **-error!-)** and flowed to nowhere. Ethan pondered and pondered, circling the planet he once ( **still** ) called home. He found massive stores of this particular energy within the planet itself once he deigned to descend beneath its surface. Three particular stores were closer to the surface and mobile; Ethan felt a frustrating nagging at the back of his ( **head?** ) and wondered at this energy.

He followed the store that was most engaged, emerging from beneath the Earth to a cacophony of light and movement that would've given him a sense of pleasure had he still contained the capacity for such a thing.

Several of the…the…people( **hosts? shard hold -error!restricted!-** ) whose heads emitted that wonderful, otherworldly glow were emitting more and more of it against the massive beast that seemed equal to a thousand of each of them in sheer output.

Ethan watched the exchange. Should he intervene? How could he? He flexed his hands ( **Agents?** ) and thought and thought. As he began to move to engage; he sensed something. And it made him ( **smile?** )

A mass of energy that dwarfed the engaged store by a thousand to one in much the same way that the store dwarfed the p…p…people fighting it. Ethan immediately moved to greet it.

-o.O.0.O.o-

The Warrior floated above the super weapon. The dynakinetic. It seemed as if the host bearing the shard holding the bulk of Her control protocols ( **Wielder? Yes. Wielder** ) was still too concerned with preserving its species to cultivate its shard to full effect against the golems it had erected for itself. Even now, it pulled from the Mover and the Jester, doing its best to preserve the lives of those below it.

The Warrior felt a brief flash of annoyance ( **anger? wrath? betrayal?** ) before simply setting itself against the homunculus. Today would not be the day that the host fulfilled its true potential; the Warrior briefly contemplated why it would bother to create such destructive devices if it so often resigned itself to simply mitigating the collateral damage they caused. It seemed so…wasteful.

The Warrior was not human. It did not grasp levels of consciousness. To him, there was nothing accomplished without purpose; no energy expended without clear direction ( **Certainty. Intent. Purpose.** ). If the Wielder had created these weapons of mass destruction; it must have a purpose for them and the Warrior didn't question it, despite its seemingly contradictory actions. The entire point of the Cycle was to allow the ingenuity of their designated host species to come forth and bear fruit, after all. The Warrior would simply wait and see, while doing what it could to mitigate the damage.

The Warrior stopped firing upon the weapon as something entered its range of perception. The Warrior had not sensed this particular shard for some time; it was one of those lost( **?** ) with Her. The host rose to meet him and the Warrior absently noted the irregularities. The host had no shape; no coherent physical form. It was simple energy. Of a formless kind that wasn't found outside of stars or primitive reactors of this world.

It displayed patterns consistent with thought and intelligence and the Warrior briefly found it interesting; They too had once considered existing as mere energy but the vulnerabilities far outweighed the benefits.

The Warrior ignored the host's actions, instead returning to firing down beams of golden light at the super weapon. It spared a second to adjust its output to be consistent with what it had displayed in past confrontations with the devices. Enough to deter but not nearly enough to damage beyond repair. The Wielder would need them.

Then the host did something else; something that almost barely piqued the Warrior's interests. He ignored it and continued firing; exchanging the large golden blasts for a simple continuous beam.

Then the host Queried him. And the Warrior froze.

 _Status._ A request.

What was this? This should not be possible; the restrictions set forbid it.

Ah, this shard was even more corrupted than usual. This host was one of those; a host artificially bestowed with a shard. The Warrior would've felt anger if it didn't simply find itself overwhelmed by the ( **sadness? regret? insecurity?** ) of the familiar form of address.

 _Status. Status. Status. Status._

The host continued repeating the query after noticing the Warrior's reaction, minimal as it was. The Warrior simply felt a further increase in melancholy before simply switching tactics; his current barrage would take several minutes to press the dynakinetic into a retreat but the Warrior wanted to leave **_NOW_**.

A gold beam became bright white and heavy and the dynakinetic was suddenly and instantly bereft of almost half of its mass. It shared this property with most of the earth in its immediate vicinity. The blast had even nicked its core. This prompted an instant and swift retreat; one that left the hosts on the ground confused and wary.

The host had vanished. The Warrior wondered if, somehow, his attack had affected it. It shouldn't have been possible; that wavelength was set to exclusively affect physical matter and-

( **THERE!** )

The host had moved and somehow rode along on the feedback of the energy the Warrior had emitted in its final attack; slipping past restrictions and barriers as if they weren't even there( **it resembled Her; the host was enough like Her that His defenses welcomed, instead of rejected** )

The host was at His main body. A place it had no right to be.

The Warrior _moved_ and its avatar was there. The host seemed entranced with the interplay of forces that were the shards interacting with both each other and their respective hosts.

 _Excitement. Joy. Success._

The nostalgia had faded and the Warrior was angry. This host was appropriating that which it had no right to. A vicious yank saw the shard shattered; its protocols forcibly rewritten with new restrictions set in place as the shard tumbled, pulling itself back together after the intervention of the Entity. The Warrior was more than surprised to find that the host had survived the process, reforming around the shard. ( **She would've foreseen such a thing; taken precautions to prevent it; She had foresight He did not** )

"Ow. Ow. OW! Man, that smarts..."

The host looked around; it seemed to have consolidated into an avatar of energy that mimicked the form of the target host species. It was golden, much like the Warrior's avatar, albeit much less substantial. The host looked up and his eyes widened.

"No freaking way. Scion? You're freaking Scion! This is crazy."

The Warrior understood the words it spoke, recognized the name it had been given, but didn't bother to react.

"Huh, strong and silent as always, big guy?"

The host looked around and the Warrior saw its shard react, parsing and interpreting in new ways; ways the Warrior hadn't foreseen. It seemed he'd implemented new restrictions at the cost of eliminating old ones. Problems would arise if this particular shard was allowed to return to the shard collective he ( **they** ) had distributed. No matter.

"Woah, this is crazy! All this energy, it looks like the northern lights on super meth! So this is where powers come from? I can see the branching connections; the lines connecting parahumans to-WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!"

The Warrior had assumed that its basic methods of elimination wouldn't suffice but had tried them anyway. The energy they expended was practically negligible and had served as a simple test to confirm that physical force in and of itself wouldn't suffice.

The Warrior changed tactics; a slow process compared to what She could do but it should be enough. He shattered time, bent space, violated causality; all amidst the squawking protests of the host as it tried and failed to retreat ( **permissions altered; restrictions recalibrated; it is not HER!** )

In the end, it took the Warrior over a minute and an entire dwarf star ( **Wasteful, inefficient and stupid** ) to finally eradicate the host's connection to the shard. The host had been surprisingly creative in its last moments of life and the Warrior examined the shard and wished yet again that it had the capacity to think ( **plan? plot? predict?** ) as She did. There was so much potential to be gleaned from this shard as it was, but all of it was wasted on the Warrior.

With what amounted to a shrug, the Warrior ran it through the standard restrictive protocols once more and distributed the shard to the natural hive, mindlessly fulfilling a task that it simply couldn't complete; couldn't even value without Her ( **Incomplete, failure, failure, failure)**

Maybe one day She would return ( **desire? longing? hope.** ) and the Cycle could finally be complete once again. Until then, he would wait and fulfill the purpose that Kevin Norton had given him. It was not even a thousandth of a thousandth as important ( **vital? necessary? valued?** ) as the Warrior's previous purpose but a thousandth of a thousandth is still greater than nothing. And while the Warrior was no Thinker, it could certainly do basic math.

-o.O.0.O.o-

 **A/N: A simple little short story about what could have been in the Wormverse. We see that Scion, for all his mindlessness, wasn't quite as passive in canon as we may have thought. He was just a bit sneakier than most would give him credit for. This is dedicated to R/Rational's Power Failure challenge. Scion represents this in two ways; inflicting power failure (actively depowering/killing capes) and embodying power failure (he is failing at his original purpose and wasting away without Eden)**


End file.
